3. The Golden Band

He couldn’t work out what had woken him. It was quiet. It was dark. It was cold. And he was half sitting, half lying uncomfortably on a knot in a tree. A tree. How did he get in a tree?

A second later he remembered the events of the previous day and sighed quietly to himself. There was Iva next to him, breathing gently in sleep. It must be getting close to the time for him to return to his father. The thought just brought a sinking feeling into his chest.

Moonlight streamed through the tree branches. It caught something bright and shiny next to him. Curious, Haiden picked it up and realised that the shiny thing was in fact wrapped around Iva’s wrist. It was a thick golden band, about two inches long. He tried not to stir Iva as he looked more closely at the band. It seemed to be welded to her flesh, the metal cutting straight into her arm. Haiden turned it over and saw that a crest was engraved on it. Two mockingbirds chased each other over the words ‘Enchantment shall flourish’.

His heart dropped in shock when he realised what that meant.

That was the crest of the Houses of Enchantment. He looked at Iva. Surely she couldn’t be from a House of Enchantment. She couldn’t be an Enchantress.

A shout broke through the silent air. Haiden jumped. Iva shot straight to a sitting position, her eyes, wide with fear, reflected in the moonlight.

‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ she said.

Haiden hardly had a chance to process her words before she was pulling him down the tree. He had to grab onto a branch to stop himself falling. Iva scuttled to the bottom and Haiden followed behind her. In seconds they had reached the bottom and Iva was pushing him towards the wood.

‘What are you doing?’Haiden demanded. ‘What’s going on?’

He wanted to know what the golden band was and why an Enchantress was so far away from Hallery, but Iva clamped a hand over his mouth, hissing at him to be quiet. She dragged him deeper into the forest.

More shouts issued behind them, too far away to hear the actual words, but the sound of clattering horseshoes was becoming louder. Haiden looked around to see a huge group of horsemen advancing towards them. There must have been at least fifty of them and they were quickly closing the gap between him and Iva. Iva saw this too and squealed with fright. She doubled her pace, sprinting faster and faster through the trees.

Sprinting faster than Haiden could.

She lost her grip on him.

Haiden struggled to keep up with her. She disappeared into the thick trees. He tried to follow her but he didn’t know where she had gone.

He was alone.

The horsemen were so close now.

Close enough for him to hear one of them shout, ‘That’s her! She ran into those trees! Someone stop the other one!’